Grant McCracken: Cultural Intelligence: The Boomer Report Card

I believe boomers have broken out of orbit. They know less and less about our culture.

As managers, they continue to make decisions that guide the corporation. Some of them go so far to insist that their detailed knowledge of the Kenny Loggins songbook and Law and Order episodes is quite enough to help them steer the corporation through the meteor field of contemporary culture. (Block that metaphor!)

But they are wrong. Boomer culture must not be mistaken for contemporary culture. (It is a diminishing subset.) Boomers are badly informed.

How do I know? I have a test.

Entertainment Weekly recently published a Power List that shows the “50 most powerful entertainers.” If we look at the top 10 people in this list, there’s no real cause for alarm.

A boomer will recognize all the names on this list. But unless they are stealing cultural signals from their teenage sons and daughters, they will be a little vague on three names: Lady Gaga, Simon Cowell and Eminem.

They will have imperfect knowledge. The signature of imperfect knowledge is first emotional and then linquistic. When asked, “So have you heard of Eminem,” the boomer will protest too much (i.e., defensively) with “Sure, I have.” But the real give-away is always the admission of scant knowledge. As in, “Sure, I have. Isn’t he the one who…” Let’s agree. Imperfect knowledge is insufficient knowledge. It is not nearly ehough to make the corporation culturally alert.

So the report card here is something like C+ with a sternly worded note to parents that reads, “Bobbie Boomer must try harder!”

The situation gets much worse when we turn to the second list contained in EW, the 40 under 40. Here the top ten are:

The only certain knowledge here is Tobey Maquire and possibly Orlando Bloom. (Hayden Christensen should be here, but he seems to keep a low celebrity profile.) There are several soft spots. (“Robert Pattison, isn’t he like that Vampire guy?”) And there are several complete blanks. Again unless they are stealing signals from their kids, boomers have never heard of Jaden Smith or Taylor Lautner.